Different
by NRC
Summary: Some people fit in, others stand out. Some stand out where they fit in and others fit in where they stand out. Teenaged. One-shot. Slightly AU, can be canon.


**DISCLAIMER**

** _Supernatural_ belongs to Eric Kripke.**

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><p>.<p>

Some people fit in, others stand out. Some stand out where they fit in and others fit in where they stand out.

But she's always been _different_, hasn't she?

This is how she's always spent her lunch breaks: walking around, aimlessly, almost as though she's lost within her own mind. The girls from her class eye her oddly, almost fearfully, because she's earned herself a rep that's too different for them.

She sits on a bench and surreptitiously stares at the girls from her class. They're giggling and writing notes on other people's notebooks. Same hairstyle, same make-up, same fashion. They're almost like sheep.

She's never wanted to be a sheep; she's grown up the lone wolf, and she doesn't want to change that. It just stings a little when she watches them with their friends, talking and giggling, carefree.

Because she feels so alone, like if she didn't hold on to her sanity, she'd slowly fade away, and no one would notice.

Her vision is blocked by a boy – a man, really – who she vaguely remembers as being in a class two door down from hers. She squints up at him, because the sun is shining right behind his head, and it's acting like an effulgence, as if he's like a god.

She sees his face, and realizes this man is who the girls have always been referring to as the hottest guy in school. She masks on her best go-away glare, but he sees right through her, smirking at her knowingly.

There's something in his eyes, like he's lived through more than these boringly normal people, their classmates. There's something in his grin, like he knows what she's gone and still going through. There's something in his face, something caring and friendly, something she can trust and have faith in.

She doesn't tell him to go away when he sits beside her, both of them looking at the girls who are still writing in others' notebooks. She starts to wonder what they're doing, but she's not so curious that she'd go up there and ask them.

She doesn't walk away when he turns to look at her instead, his green eyes soft yet strong, asking questions, searching her face. She hears him ask her if she has a notebook like them, like those girls. She doesn't know what he's talking about.

She listens when he begins to explain that the girls had an idea: to spread their love by randomly writing notes on their friends' and classmates' notebooks. She shrugs; she doesn't care much for their habit of self-advertising. He tells her that their actions had spread throughout the school, and everyone was writing in everyone's notebooks.

She turns to stare at him incredulously when he pulls out a marker and asks for her notebook.

She asks him if he even knew her name, and doesn't he know that she's not into that 'stuff' because she's not like them, and doesn't he know that it'll ruin his reputation if he's seen talking to her.

He answers that he doesn't care.

Without breaking eye-contact, he slowly reaches for her right hand. He pulls up the brown leather sleeve, and that's when he looks down. He seems surprised to find her arm as it is, and asks her doesn't she cut herself, to which she answers indignantly that just because she's into knives, didn't mean she used them on herself.

He gives her another smile – it's short and fleeting but breathtaking, and she realizes he's really something other, something more, something _different_, like her.

Slowly, he carefully writes _love_ in large, bold, black letters running up her forearm. He adds _Ted Nugent_ under it, and she grins a little at that. He starts to stand, telling her he has class now, and she nods and says thanks, her eyes expressing all the words she can't say. He grins at her one last time, before walking away.

She walks back to class in a daze, the right sleeve still bunched up around her elbows, the declaration of _love_ visible to all.

.-.-.-.

He watches her walk away and regrets that he's waited this long to make his move.

She's always caught his eye, ever since he first moved here. He's tried his best to convince himself that he felt nothing new, nothing different for the reclusive blonde who sat with no one and talked to no one. He's tried to tell himself to just forget about her, because when he moves – when, and not if – there was no point in forming a relationship or even a friendship with her.

It's bitter and stings like a bitch, but he has to get used to it, doesn't he? It's part of his job, part of his life.

So he turns away, heading back to the Impala, heading back to the motel, heading back to life on the road. His father had finished the job that kept them here for a couple of months, and now they were moving on.

He doesn't want to think of how she'd feel when she finds out he's gone.

He slams the car door close, chaining his memory of the beautiful, sweet, broken blonde whose name he didn't even ask for – because he knows it doesn't even matter – to the recesses of his mind.

.

.

.


End file.
